


deeper than any ocean floor

by mapped



Category: Black Sails
Genre: 4x09, Episode Tag, First Kiss, Love Confessions, M/M, Season/Series 04
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-28
Updated: 2017-03-28
Packaged: 2018-10-11 21:58:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,749
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10475319
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mapped/pseuds/mapped
Summary: Love had not occurred to John Silver. Till now.A 4x09 reaction fic.





	

In the warm dark womb of the ocean, as John Silver cuts through the strap of his false leg and frees himself from his entanglement, he thinks of that grassy sun-blessed clifftop on the Maroon Island, the soft open surprise on his captain’s face when he rolled up his trouser cuff and unbuckled his peg leg without needing to be asked twice, the weeks he spent on that clifftop with his captain, learning how to move anew.

When he has emerged from the ocean, when he has been taken captive by Israel Hands and then released, when Hands throws him a crutch scavenged from somewhere, John stumbles upright and fits the crutch under his arm, and he feels as comfortable as if he were sitting by his captain’s side, shoulder to shoulder, drinking rum and swapping stories. He thinks, _Oh, this is familiar._

And then his captain comes and saves him from the Redcoats, and as they walk side by side on the dirt path through the shrubbery, the wood of the crutch handle presses into John’s palm with every step. It is as safe and solid as his captain next to him, and every crunch of grit underfoot sounds like the _thank you_ that he wishes to, but does not, say.

* * *

He is tired of letting Flint talk, tired of hearing things that he does not want to hear. He has trusted Flint, goddammit, he has, but just this _once_ he demanded Flint to trust him back, and Flint gave his word but then broke it anyway, and John is _done_. Oh, some part of him still pours towards Flint, a habit so worn that it is almost instinct, almost nature, like waves pulled by the moon towards the shore. The rum-bottle green of Flint’s eyes calls to him, promises him that old familiar intoxication. But he is done. He will not let Hands be right. He will not let Flint talk him out of this. He will not let Flint’s words sway him now, or ever again.

He draws his sword, but even the sparking noise of it being unsheathed makes him think of Flint’s name, and… God, he can’t. Can he?

In the space between one breath and the next, Flint shouts, “No, don’t!” and raises his pistol and fires. John’s whole body goes cold, colder than he’s ever felt in this part of the world, the cold of bitter buried days and brittle barbed ice. But it is not him that Flint has shot. It is not him.

He whips his head round to see Dooley falling into the undergrowth.

He turns back and stares at Flint. He doesn’t _understand_ what he sees there. He doesn’t understand the tremor in Flint’s face, the quake of muscles under Flint’s eyes, the twitching knit of Flint’s brow. He doesn’t understand any of it, and he doesn’t want to understand it, he has no _time_ for this. Fuck Flint, fuck Flint and his flagrant disregard for the people who _trust_ him—

John springs into action.

It is nothing like practice. It is nothing like a clifftop with Nassau in the distance, a dream on the horizon only his captain can see. But every clang of his sword against Flint’s, every desperate thrust and parry, still feels like something rehearsed, something they have done a thousand times before and will do a thousand times again, a little differently each time: a story told so often it has become nothing like the original.

He is so _angry_ , and he doesn’t know why, but he throws himself into the fight, he moves as Flint has taught him, he spins and twists and leaps and dodges and all of it, _all of it_ he has learnt from Flint, weeks on a clifftop dancing around his captain, around a past that he didn’t ever want to share, around a future that he didn’t ever want to dawn, and he is so fucking _angry_ , and, and—

Explosions from afar wake him as if from troubled sleep.

He follows his captain as they scramble through the forest, Hands behind them, and his heart is still pounding, with this _rage_ that has nowhere to go, and he wants Flint on the ground, he wants Flint to apologise, he wants Flint to take back his words—Madi wouldn’t, she wouldn’t discard him when he would sacrifice everything to have her safe, she _wouldn’t_. She would choose him, she would, because he matters to her, surely he matters, he has done everything for her and that has to be enough. He has to be enough. How can he do so much and still not be enough for anyone?

They stand and stare at the _Walrus_ being consumed by fire, and suddenly—suddenly John doesn’t know whether he’s angry anymore.

* * *

He walks out onto the deck. The crescent moon is a shallow bowl tipping over in the sky, spilling starlit ink across the sea. Madi and Flint are talking at the rail. Madi sees John first; she and Flint exchange a look, and she leaves Flint and approaches him.

“John,” she says.

He doesn’t look at her. “Flint was right, wasn’t he?” he grinds out, the words hurting his throat.

She clasps his hands, and he wants both to shove her away and never to let her go. “I wish you would understand,” she says. “It does not mean I do not love you. But there are greater, heavier things in the world than the love between you and I. You do not feel the burden of history upon your back as I do. I may be your tether, John, but I myself am tethered to so many more. Generations of people who have been beaten and bound. The weight of my crown is the sum of all their pain. I cannot forsake them.”

“You weren’t like this before you and he started becoming so close,” he says, and Madi actually rolls her eyes and slaps him on the arm.

“I do not know where you got that idea from,” she says. “I love you, John Silver. But you and I…” She looks down at her hand where it curls around his elbow, and then she smiles at him, gentle and sad. “You do not know what it is to truly believe in a cause. You do not know what it is to belong to something. I have always believed, and belonged, and I was like this before you or Captain Flint ever arrived on my island.”

“I,” he begins, and swallows, “I belonged to _you_. I would have done anything to ensure your safety. I don’t understand why that was wrong.”

She huffs a quiet laugh. “I wasn’t the one you tried to kill.” Her hand still grasps his sleeve, and she swings his arm a little bit, playful and reproving at the same time, and he loves her _so much_ , he doesn’t know how he can fix this but he will do anything she asks. She glances sideways at the captain, who is now alone at the rail. “I do not approve of valuing a single life over and above everything else and every _one_ else, but I think I may know somebody who can at least sympathise with you.”

She kisses John’s cheek, a warmth that is there only for a moment and gone too soon, and then she vanishes through the threshold into the belly of the ship.

A few strides and he reaches Flint, a pale ghost in the night, and he thinks, _Oh. Fuck._

Flint is going to haunt him forever. He can see it now, his hair grizzled, his bones aching, and he’s going to think of Flint. He’s going to think of that damned schedule, how it burnt in the fire, how it burnt in his own memory as Flint slammed him up against a wall of rock in the Wrecks. He’s going to think of Flint’s wolfish grin, and _We might be friends by then_. He’s going to think of Flint cradling Gates’ dead body and mumbling apologies to a corpse. He’s going to think of dragging Flint from the clutches of the ocean. He’s going to think of taking a fucking Spanish warship with Flint by his side. He’s going to think of waking up a cripple and seeing Flint’s fond eyes. He’s going to think of hearing Flint say Thomas Hamilton’s name for the first time and wondering how it was possible that a man can still express this much love for someone else ten years after the fact, just by uttering a name. He’s going to think of Flint on the clifftop where they met every day during those few weeks that were summer-ripe and bursting with hope, sword striking sword, and where Flint taught John everything, everything.

 _Oh_ , John thinks.

Flint saying to him, “I’ll take my chances,” and smiling at him. Flint murdering Dooley without even a second’s hesitation, because Dooley was going to kill John. Flint standing right here at the rail, head turned just slightly to look at him, eyes still fond, after all this time, after all that has passed between them. Fonder, even. Eyes as tender as green shoots sprouting from rain-sweetened earth.

John wants to weep.

“You love me,” he says, staggered by it.

Flint blinks at him. “I.” Flint’s hands are near jumping. His gaze flickers away, to the black syrup of the sea. He looks back at John, his mouth tightening into a line. And then he finally says, “I suppose I do, yes.”

“And you’ve known this _how_ long?” John asks.

Flint closes his eyes, and there’s a period of silence, as if he’s remembering it all in his head, tracing a thread through time. “Long,” he says. “Months.”

“ _When_?” John presses.

Flint opens his eyes. “If I had to say… I think that morning we were freed from the cage on the Maroon Island.”

“Jesus.” John takes a deep breath, his ribs somehow sore with it. He laughs. He can’t help it. This is absurd. “I had no idea.” He laughs some more, one hand gripping the rail. “I had no fucking idea.”

Flint frowns. “I don’t see what difference it makes whether you know or not,” he says.

“What _difference_ —” John splutters. He pauses a moment to gather himself. “Well, I guess it wouldn’t have made any fucking difference, except for the fact that…” He chews his lip. He doesn’t know how to start with this. And then he does. “Do you know what thought crossed my mind just now, when I was coming up to you? I thought—one day I’ll say the name James Flint and it’ll sound like the way you say Thomas Hamilton.”

He lets that hang in the air between them. Flint’s eyes widen, and it is such a thing to behold. _God_ , how could John not have seen it before now? How could he have looked at this face, this beautiful face that always turns from stone to sand for him, and not seen love writ clear on it all these months? How could he not have seen the way the sun rises in Flint’s eyes every time Flint looks at him?

“I’m sorry,” John says. “I know you were hurt that I didn’t tell you about my story. My past. My past is something I’d much rather leave behind than carry with me. But I suppose it is becoming clear to me, and probably to you, that I am no more able to leave my past behind than you are, that my past has wounded me in ways that affect me still in the present. I… I hope that I will be able to tell it to you one day. Because I have just come to the realisation that I do not want to leave you behind. I don’t want you to ever just become a name, a story, something irretrievable and perserved only in the realm of remembrance. But you are the first thing in my life that has ever made me want to tell a story _about_ my life. You are the first thing that I would want to admit has any relevance to the person that I see myself as now. You are the first person who has left an indelible mark on me that I do not have any wish to hide. You have shaped me, James Flint, and I will _gladly_ be defined by you, and I cannot believe it has taken me this fucking long to realise that.”

His eyes are damp, and the handle of his crutch is digging fiercely into the heel of his palm; he is holding on too viciously, but he needs _something_ to steady him through this. Flint’s shoulders are trembling, his mouth is slack. He just keeps looking at John, looking and not saying anything.

“I don’t know what I was thinking. I don’t know how I wasted all this time not understanding just how much you mean to me. I—” He winces, remembering how he told Madi that he had earned Flint’s _respect_ , and then he laughs again, the sound scraping his throat raw. “Fucking hell. I was so _blind_. I’ve wanted you and wanted you and I have somehow denied it, somehow concealed it from myself so well I never even allowed myself to consider the possibility of it. Christ, the way you looked when you killed Dooley. It was awful, I didn’t _know_. You _love_ me. You love me.”

Flint’s lip is quivering. “Stop—”

“I love you,” John says, grabbing hold of Flint’s shirtsleeve, watching those green eyes, delicate with hope like the first sign of spring in winter. “I love you.” And instead of recoiling, Flint takes a minute step towards him, which is all John needs. He leans up and in and kisses Flint, the warmth of Flint’s mouth a bright and dazzling thing, like the flash of steel in sunlight. His hand drifts from Flint’s sleeve up to Flint’s neck, caressing Flint’s jaw with his thumb. It’s as if every time he and Flint had stood on that clifftop and traded blows, he had really wanted to do this, to feel the heat of Flint’s tongue licking into his mouth. How had he not known?

His fist in the back of Flint’s shirt collar, he breaks off the kiss, shuddering. “I could have _killed_ you,” he says, eyes lingering on Flint’s reddened lips.

“You couldn’t have,” Flint reassures him. “Even Hands couldn’t lay a finger on me. I killed Joji, and he was our best swordfighter. You could never have killed me.”

John bristles mildly. “Arrogant arse,” he scoffs, and kisses Flint again, biting his lip, teasing it between his teeth, before pulling away. “You weren’t even trying to hurt me at all, were you?”

“No,” Flint says. “I could never have. I could never bear for you to come to any harm. You. You _saw_ …” He trails off, the expression on his face a faint echo of the way he had looked when his pistol had been freshly smoking, the bullet planted in Dooley’s chest.

“I saw,” John acknowledges, flattening his palm over Flint’s heart. “But what if— what _if_ you’d died? I sent six men after you, I couldn’t have controlled them—”

“I’d rather me than you,” Flint murmurs, voice softer than a bed of verdant grass.

And John hates this, he hates it, but he can’t help but be overjoyed by it, he can’t help but crave more. He _matters_ this much to Flint. Flint _loves_ him. This whole time, Flint has loved him, and he had thought it was only… only respect.

He lays his head on Flint’s shoulder and wraps one arm around Flint’s waist. “I love you,” he says again, and doesn’t think he’ll ever tire of it. “Wherever you’re going, I’m going with you.”

It feels like his very first sword-fighting lesson with Flint again, at the beginning of those weeks on the clifftop, all the ocean to one side of him and all the land to the other, the two of them smiling at each other before clashing swords for the first time, wholly unafraid. He’d thought that he couldn’t imagine what was possible as long as they had each other’s true friendship. But now, now John Silver thinks, _love_ , and it is as dependable as the crutch tucked under his arm; the whole world lies open before him, endless and illuminated.

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Sleeping At Last - 'Land Or Sea'.
> 
> Comments are really appreciated! <3 Come find me [on tumblr](http://reluming.tumblr.com) where I still haven't quite accepted that the show is going to end in less than a week. :')


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